


How Could Anyone

by tigersinlondon



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Social Justice, Unrequited Love, Wanky Intellectuals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 21:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6488830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersinlondon/pseuds/tigersinlondon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written 2013</p>
<p>Les Mis modern au. Grantaire was a worshipper at his altar, a comet in his orbit, and Enjolras was his muse and his raison d'ètre. Set in England because that is the education system that I know shit about.</p>
<p>    <i>The thing was, as Grantaire explained at length to Bossuet over the phone at 1am, “I’d rather get under his skin than be nowhere near him at all”.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	How Could Anyone

Grantaire had a theory on the uses of men, specifically, men who appeared as Greek gods and spoke like wartime politicians, if wartime politicians hated the very structure they worked for and strove to bring it down in protest of the staleness of the leaders of society and the injustice which the minorities of the population had to suffer.

It was merely coincidence that he knew only one such man like this, but that is beside the point. Men like that had two possible uses; the first was to become a charismatic leader of a group of rich young men who looked to catch a reflection of him in their own faces, and who fancied themselves brave warriors of social justice, and the saviours of the poor families who lived off the meagre benefits bestowed to them by a harsh and close-fisted government. The second was to become a great lover of women; charm them into bed with golden locks and a silver tongue that spoke of politics that none of them could even try to understand, but served to make him look intelligent as well as attractive.

Grantaire told this theory to a girl named Éponine, in a bar approximately half a mile from his flat, and she smiled sadly and said the name of the man of whom it was obvious that he was talking about, and Grantaire was silent.

“Except he’s obviously celibate as a plank,” she said, not unkindly. “And plus, at least if you aren’t having him, no one is.”

Grantaire raised his head from the table and made a noise that sounded halfway between a grunt and a whine, but was supposed to mean ‘that doesn’t make me feel any better’, and then laid it back down. Éponine stroked his curls gently, a sisterly gesture that could have swayed him into sleep if it wasn’t for the fact that his brain had suddenly developed motion sickness.

He promptly threw up onto the floor.

+

There was a time, Grantaire reflected, when his place among the politically active, rebelling rich-boy, probably heaps of daddy issues, literature or history or law or international relations students of Les Amis des l’ABC would have been questioned. In fact, it was; multiple times. In the same quietly derisive, snooty tone. By the same person. And every time, it was a chip in the carefully plastered wall of joking indifference and insincerity that Grantaire had put up and left up for the benefit of masking his stupidly deep-running emotions.

The “don’t you have somewhere else to get drunk”, “would you stop interrupting, some of us are trying to be serious”, and various stony glares lasted approximately two months, until it boiled over into “for god’s sake, Grantaire, go home” with gritted teeth and snapped patience. Combeferre, gentle and sensible soul that he was, rested a hand on Grantaire’s shoulder and the other on Enjolras’ arm (for it was he who was the fearless leader of Les Amis, and the object of Grantaire’s misplaced worship), and said “calm down, Enjolras, he’s not doing any harm”. Enjolras stepped off and sat at another table, fight quenched by reason, and Combeferre spoke quietly and with sympathy to his inebriated friend. “Don’t needle him, R, it’s not worth it.” Grantaire thought aggressively at him that it really, really was.

After that, and ever since, their interactions were limited to annoyed scowls and irked eyebrows on Enjolras’ part, and mocking but less frequent catcalls on Grantaire’s part, daring him to say something, do something that would allow them to fall into conversation (even if it were five minutes of yelling) or push their personal spaces into one (even if physical injury were involved). The thing was, as Grantaire explained at length to Bossuet over the phone at 1am, “I’d rather get under his skin than be nowhere near him at all”.  And so they continued, one a star, bright and sustaining, the other a far out planet, or a comet maybe, circling the source of light and heat but too far out and too small that the star would ever notice its gravity. Grantaire called Enjolras ‘Apollo’, and Enjolras called Grantaire nothing at all.

Enjolras was, quite simply, a vengeful god, and no one knew it better than Grantaire, who had been to every meeting and heard every moving speech. He knew the fire in his eyes and could see the marble pedestal under his feet, the roar of agreement was the same goosebump-inducing loudness at each one, and his supporters, his friends, would scream and be blinded by purpose and righteous anger, and Enjolras, Apollo, beautiful and terrible, was the match that lit them into spontaneous flames. His ideals were his lyre music, and Combeferre was his Hermes. Grantaire imagined that the clouds opened above him to shine bright sunlight on his rage; he was a magnifying glass and the students around him were dry grass.

+

Grantaire was a fine art student. By that, it may be understood that he spent half his time searching out a muse whilst spectacularly wankered, and the other half lounging about his dingy student apartment attempting to curl pencil scrapings and daubs of watercolour paint around each other into something that resolutely was not golden and had soft waves and wore worn leather the colour of varnished teak and the same red jacket to every meeting.

Grantaire, therefore, went to work on paintings containing the colour red in sparse, allowed quantities; a poppy field in a watercolour landscape, a flash of auburn hair lit by sunlight on a pretty girl, pomegranates in a bowl of fruit. His tutor and peers thought they were ‘wonderful’, ‘inspired’, and many other words that made Grantaire want to hit his head against the nearest brick wall because he just didn’t feel it. His good friend and one-time roommate Jehan had said, sitting in the half-lotus position on Grantaire’s duvet with his English notebook open on his lap at a half-finished poem, that he should “paint from the heart, man, all these are great but they’re kinda cold, you know?” Grantaire had nodded absently and his eyes had flicked to the torn canvas wrapped in a sheet beneath his bed.

The canvas in question was one that had been carried under Grantaire’s sweaty arm on the train one May, surrounded by a dozen excited and restless members of Les Amis, and one Greek god who was apparently immune to the effects of the ridiculous heat. The canvas had been set up on the pavement on a small stand, and the painter sat cross-legged in front of it and painted what he saw. What he saw was harsh sunlight making the sides of buildings bold and contrasting the walls in shadow, and an arc of dark silhouettes with only the edges of their bodies lit up and coloured, surrounding the centrepiece of the painting; a figure standing against the bright blue sky on top of a car roof, dressed in red with a gold mop atop his head and an arm extended into the sky as if he could capture the sun in his hand, and in fact it seemed that he outshone it in his radiance. Courfeyrac had bothered Grantaire until he showed it to him, but after the soft “oh”, the look of dawning realisation, and then one of profound pity, Grantaire had hid it in a threadbare sheet as soon as he got home, bruised and battered and cowardly while the rest were still at the police station, and stowed it away under his bed never to let his heart be viewed, or pitied, again.

+

“I am…” murmured Grantaire in the most articulate way he could manage, “I am very drunk…” He broke off into hysterical giggles and if anyone were around they would have laughed at him, or maybe cried if they looked a little closer, and then helped him up, but they weren’t, so they didn’t.

+

One particular evening, Grantaire found himself sitting on Jehan’s ratty sofa and listening to CSI Miami on low volume from the small tv across the room, whilst braiding Jehan’s hair into a long pale streak punctuated with yellow narcissi which hung down his back over a dark too-big tee. This had previously been protested against as ‘the most emasculating task ever’, but the argument had since been resolved under the premise that if Montparnasse could do it and still look like he could knock your teeth out with the discarded stems at any given moment, then Grantaire could certainly help when Jehan’s juxtaposed boyfriend was unavailable. Jehan whistled while Grantaire threaded the thin stems through the braid, and he had almost finished when the doorbell to the apartment rang.

Jehan rose from the sofa and waited standing while Grantaire snapped the last twist of the hairtie around the end of the braid, and then he impatiently dashed off to get the door, hair flicking through the air as he moved.

“I am wounded!” Grantaire called after him sarcastically. “It’s taken me one and a half episodes of that bloody procedural cop show to plait that, and now you’re fucking off to fuck your thug boyfriend while I am noteably getting none!...” He trailed off. Standing in the doorway was Enjolras, beautiful as ever, even slightly dampened by the light spring rain that was falling outside, who was adopting a peeved expression which Grantaire suspected was aimed at him. Jehan looked apologetic and attempted to shunt Enjolras into the other room.

Enjolras was an electric field down whose lines Grantaire would inevitably accelerate, so naturally he followed them down the thin intersection between the two parts of the apartment and leant over the back of a scuffed mock-leather chair to leer at the two of them. The air felt charged, a sharp taste that wasn’t citrus but was more copper and hair-standing-on-end, and Jehan could sense the approaching standoff even from his short stature.

“I wanted to continue the discussion with you about the gearing of higher education away from those in the working class,” he said, addressing Jehan at first but clearly aiming his severe tone at Grantaire, “Not necessarily in private, but I doubt it would interest you very much, Grantaire.”

“How do you know that I’m not interested?” Grantaire replied airily, but with a backdrop of cold sarcasm, “You don’t know me well enough, Apollo; we could have been talking about rich-people-privilege in education for the last hour before you arrived. In fact, it is one of my great fascinations, along with the effects of 3 bottles of wine on white males aged 23 of my height and weight,” he grinned lazily, “and chicks.”

“Feel free to conduct experiments into your wine and spirits, then, and leave the intelligent conversation and important matters to the rest of us,” Enjolras responded through thinly veiled irritation. Jehan shifted from foot to foot, unnoticed.

“The important matters being only suitable for you and your precious followers then? Oh, sorry, no one else is allowed to be even faintly interested in your pointless social justice affairs, because you’re all so up your own arses about it that you’re obviously the only ones who can deal with it. I understand.” He laughed. Of course Grantaire knew his friends weren’t half so elitist, but the quietly fuming look he received in return for the comment was worth the exaggeration.

Jehan, uncomfortable in the tense atmosphere and caught in the middle of an argument that could go on for days if allowed, and in his own apartment too, fiddled with his jumper sleeves. He made an aborted motion that was possibly meant to indicate that Grantaire should go, and followed it up with “Alright, leave it Enjolras, please”, and a slightly guilty “I’ll see you later, R, yeah?”

Grantaire deflated, and his grin faded. Enjolras turned away and Grantaire immediately missed the piercing eye contact that had been a product of their dispute. He released the abused chair to walk carefully back into the living room and unceremoniously throw himself face down on the sofa. He wiggled his hand into his jeans pocket to free his phone and wedged it under one side of his face where he could squint at it and press the call button on “most called: Éponine”.

+

There were ducks, Grantaire thought absently, ducks, and water, and reeds, and he was somewhere in the middle, or maybe he was at the edge, looking in, looking down. Someone else’s shaking hand (or maybe it was his own) laid out another line on the already-powdered card, and he took it readily. He imagined he could feel it travelling up his nasal passages, stinging like lemon juice in a half-healed cut, and into every nerve of his brain, covering them in cotton wool and clouds as it went. Every movement he made felt like dancing.

Some time passed, and he was somewhere warmer, but under his feet it was cold, and then under his knees it was cold too, and the white bowl in front of him swallowed up his tears and vomit both, and he cried for his idol and his love, but another hand rubbed his back and wiped his mouth and made him brush his teeth afterwards. It was a familiar hand, and he felt bad for wanting another, when this one was clearly more suited to his current state. Eventually he fell into a light sleep, empty and useless and craving something else to numb the pain.

+

It was dusk, and it was raining steadily in the kind of persistent way that knows you will get wet if it just keeps going and no matter how long it takes, you will end up looking like a drowned rat. Grantaire, in a thin raincoat, had reached said drowned rat stage. He approached a figure in a darker, equally soaked jacket and trainers. The figure in question was smoking a cigarette, hunched over with his tall back against the rain.

“Grantaire, man, back again?” the figure addressed him, taking a long final drag dangerously close to the filter before dropping the butt to the ground and pressing it into a forming puddle with his drenched toe. His pretty, angled features and dark hair protruded from underneath his hood into the final dregs of daylight, and the half-smile he gave was one that a fox might give to a bird it was considering eating. The edge of a black-lined tattoo of a sparrow was visible underneath his ear, the rest of its body sprawled across the back of his neck.

Grantaire did a sort of awkward shuffle and worried at the hangnails on his well-chewed left hand with the bitten nails of his right. “Look, I just need another gram to carry me over to next week,” he said, his voice tired and rough.

Montparnasse sighed and rocked back on his heels. “I know, trust me, but this is your third in what, a week? And,” he raised his hands in a placating gesture, “I’m the last person to say this but it’s not a good habit to start making.” He gave a sympathetic sort of smile, took out a second squashed roll-up and attempted to light it with a lighter that didn’t seem to want to spit out anything more than sparks.

Stepping a little closer, oblivious to the puddle that soaked into his socks, Grantaire began to speak more quickly. “I’ve got the money, come on, I know you can sell.”

Montparnasse took in his expression, the dark rings under his eyes and the sad way in which his hands shook during a short pause while the rain created shutters of water around them, and shook his head. “I promised Jehan I wouldn’t.”

“You…” Grantaire looked down in exasperation and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re fucking whipped, Parnasse, you know that?” he said spitefully, a very un-Grantaire-like sentiment, and turned away.

He walked off hastily, his head ducked against the weather, heading for the park gates and back out onto the high street. The rain continued to pour and Montparnasse found a modicum of shelter under a nearby oak to flip his phone out of his pocket.

“R’s headed towards the pub,” he reported after the soft “mmm-hi” filtered through the phone line. “He’s in a bit of a…” his voice trailed as a question reached his ears. “No, he’s not on ket, ‘cause I haven’t…” There was a rustle and a thump as the person at the other end struggled into a coat and fell over. Montparnasse pinned the phone between his cheek and shoulder and tried again to light his cigarette. “D’you want me to follow him or… Yeah. Okay.” The call ended and the lighter sputtered into flame underneath his careful hand.

Twenty minutes later, a soggy Jehan turned up in a pub in floral Doc Martens and sat next to a boy with slowly drying dark curls and the look of an addict. Words were expressed that had already been said in a thousand other ways, in a thousand other places, and it ended as it always did with beer and silence to numb a broken spirit and empty soul.

+

“You know, if I wasn’t such a fuck up, maybe he’d… I don’t know. Something.”

Éponine squeezed his hand between them. “Shh, I know,” she whispered back, and tucked her ponytail over her other shoulder.

They were at Les Amis’ weekly meeting, which that day was held in a cosy (read: small) room in Jehan’s parents’ house, and Éponine was squashed up on Grantaire’s lap in a soft, worn armchair, with a familiar brocade pattern that was similar to the furniture in Jehan’s own apartment. Grantaire’s head was dangling over the side of the armrest, and he was slouched so that Éponine could tuck her socked feet underneath his thigh. If anyone had asked, he would have said that he was bored, bored of Enjolras’ repetitive speeches of morals he didn’t have and causes he didn’t believe in and privileges that most of the people sitting in that room had and exploited; but no one did, because they were used to it, and in reality he wasn’t bored of whatever Enjolras had to say, because he would listen to whatever he had to say because it was always worth it to see him enthusiastic and happy, in his own, stern way. No, Grantaire was moping, and drunk, which was usual, and he would deny it to anyone and everyone, which was also usual.

“Academic meritocracy doesn’t exist because of pervasive and inscriptive hierarchy. We absolutely cannot concentrate on wealthier children to advance into higher education - and then have the gall to chalk it up to meritocracy - our class system is pervasive and further more morally arbitrary: to say that is just how it is, or that anybody can achieve this if they work hard enough, when expensive education lifts gives one an unfair advantage! Equality of outcome has failed - what we need is equality of opportunity.” And so Enjolras went on, quoting and referencing Rawls liberally, and Grantaire let the words and the message wash over him and into the ears of those for whom it would be better use.

After a while, Enjolras stopped his general address to the group, and moved to stand with Courfeyrac and Combeferre and engage in conversation, a few nearby new faces watching him and listening eagerly, soaking up his sunlight as plants do, in order to grow in their thoughts and selves and ideals. The rest of Les Amis fell into discussion of the topic, and Éponine turned to talk to Joly, who was sitting on one of the sofas at a right angle to the armchair. Grantaire fumbled in his pocket for his pack of tobacco, which was getting a little thin despite the 12.5g having been bought only 4 days previously. He lifted Éponine off his lap and replaced her onto the cushion, who continued the conversation while he did so, her only reaction being to wrap an arm around his shoulder to support herself, and then look up at him to give him a small smile as he left.

It was brisk outside, considering it was spring, and Grantaire was glad for the fingerless gloves that kept his hands warm while the tips of his fingers threatened to freeze all the way off as he held the cigarette to his mouth. Smoke filtered through his lips and he sighed the rest of it out.

The sound of a door opening and closing behind him broke the tentative silence. It was Enjolras. Grantaire, not being blessed with that gift to the sarcastic of being able to move his eyebrows individually, raised both in exaggerated surprise, and then offered his second rollup without changing his expression. Enjolras waved it off and eye contact was lost. He went to sit on the steps leading onto the lawn from the patio, tucking his coat under his bottom so as not to lose heat to the ground too quickly. He rested his elbows on his knees.

Grantaire tapped the ash from the end of his cigarette onto the stones. “Claustrophobic, are we?” he said, joking, but not unkindly.

There was silence once again for a drawn-out minute, until Enjolras spoke up. “Why are you here, Grantaire?” There was no severity to his voice. It was patient, and though on any other occasion he would have supplied a sardonic response, Grantaire bit his tongue to stop himself ruining the only serious conversation they may ever have.

“I mean, really. You don’t think any of this is worthwhile, I know you don’t,” Enjolras continued, looking out over the garden.

“I am where my friends are,” replied Grantaire, and took another drag of his cigarette. He breathed it out in a huff. “And you lot are pretty good for a debate. One of us has got to be the bad guy here. ‘Else you’d just be agreeing with each other.”

Enjolras shook his head and a lock of wavy blonde hair dislodged itself from behind his ear and flopped over his face when he turned to look at Grantaire. “No, there are plenty of other places you could go for a debate without having to …care about all of this.” He gestured in a way that Grantaire supposed to mean ‘all these social justice matters and pretty much everyone in that room’.

Grantaire tapped more ash onto the flagstones. “For an intelligent man, Apollo, you see very little. I am here because I would be nowhere else.”

“For an intelligent man, you _think_ very little.” Enjolras’ voice was a little harsher and Grantaire recoiled internally. “You could be valuable help in the group, Grantaire,” he said coaxingly, the harshness brushed aside, “If only you drank less and filled your brain with thoughts worth thinking.”

Grantaire smiled bitterly and bent down to extinguish the cigarette. Feeling reckless and reeling from the prolonged contact with a man he observed more than he spoke to, he extended the contact to press his mouth to the skin of Enjolras’ forehead. In the fraction of a second as he moved away, a strand of hair stuck to his lip before being pulled off. Enjolras looked up at him with an unreadable expression. Grantaire’s mouth suddenly felt dry. “I’ll see you inside.”

+

“Hh khhmm nnh nh orrhheah,” groaned Grantaire into the pillow. Cosette, who had taken moral support duty over from Éponine, rubbed his shoulder comfortingly and sat down next to him on the bed.

Grantaire tilted his head to the side and repeated mournfully, “I kissed him on the forehead.” He re-buried his face into the pillow. The heavy curtains were closed against the sunlight and there was an untouched piece of toast and a half full cup of water on Grantaire’s desk beside the bed. “The _forehead_.”

+

Grantaire was of the opinion that if one’s unrequited love would not put out then it didn’t mean no one else would. After all, that was the point of university – drinking and sex and drugs free from the demands of one’s family. Grantaire had developed the ability to pass out on anyone’s sofa, smoke out of anyone’s window, roll a joint on anyone’s living room floor, and fuck anyone who would have him.

It was for this reason that he often adopted a routine for one night stands, and the only very occasional slightly longer relationship. He wasn’t fond of spending time at the type of bar where one went to hook up, except for the sole purpose of picking up. He found them crowded and uncomfortable and the alcohol was never as good as the friendlier pubs he tended to frequent with his friends. Bossuet was a welcome companion on these sorts of expeditions, since he was a light-hearted man who wouldn’t judge on the frequency or quality of Grantaire’s hook-ups, and had the sound constitution of one who had been imbibing alcohol in all its forms regularly for many years, and thus could drink even Grantaire under the table. Which was a fun bonus.

It was a Friday night and Bossuet’s hook-up bar of choice was full. The chairs were brown fake leather and the lights had an orange tinge to them that made Grantaire think of watered-down whisky. He bought the first and third round of beers for them both, smiled sympathetically at the harried waitress, and turned his phone off. A girl with plump lips and skin the colour of beaten fudge reflected a smile back at him after he had been watching the way her mouth wrapped around the neck of various bottles of alcopops for several minutes. Bossuet nudged him and Grantaire clapped him on the shoulder before leaving his finished beer glass behind.

The girl’s name was Nkiru and she was a second year medical student and, fortunately, had just broken up with her boyfriend and was not looking for a serious relationship, according to her friend (who had made this clear in a frankly quite frightening way when Nkiru had excused herself to go to the toilet). Grantaire was not above rebound sex. Not in the slightest.

She took Grantaire back to her student apartment and into her bed (via a quick detour and some stops in the hallway). She squirmed a lot and dug her tiny heels into his back, and left small purpling marks on his shoulders and neck, and Grantaire tried very hard to remember to bite his lip and not think about anything, anyone, else other than the gorgeous, willing, naked girl underneath him.

It was a good job the beginning of Enjolras' name sounded like a groan or else Grantaire would have got kicked out of bed more often than not.

It was much later, and Nkiru had instructed him to let himself out, and then gone for a shower. Grantaire stared out of her open window, unseeing. The wind pinched at his fingertips and his nose, and whipped at the smoke from the cigarette hanging between his knuckles. He was perched on the windowsill, chain smoking while he waited for the clock’s minute hand to tick round to an acceptable time to call a friend and ply them with promises of favours and ‘I don’t have a car and it’s too late to walk or get the bus but not late enough that you’ll be in bed and thus hate me forever for waking you up’.

The sound of the shower stopped and Grantaire threw the cigarette butt down onto the pavement below and shut the window. He glanced back at the bed and reflected that he could have fucked a similar-looking, similar-sounding girl a month ago and he would not have remembered her face, nor would he have particularly cared. He found it difficult, in an abstract sort of way, with the assistance of the buzzing of just sufficient alcohol in his mind to note the differences between one face and the next, since it never seemed to particularly matter, and they all paled in comparison to Enjolras nonetheless.

Grantaire got a lift home to a cold bed and a colder bottle of cider, and drank until he felt loose enough to attempt sleep.

+

Grantaire was not like Enjolras. Not just in the superficial ways: Grantaire’s drink and drug abuse, his good humour and easy-going cynicism, his lack of motivation and drive, compared with Enjolras’ abstinence from almost everything except the occasional cigarette during finals, his seriousness and strong beliefs, and his iron-willed nature. Deep down, they were still polar opposites. Enjolras had a flame kindled in his chest that would someday set alight a government, a city, a powerful activist group. He was the sun born on earth. Grantaire’s chest contained a thumping muscle and an aching for something more.

Enjolras saw the bigger picture – the suffering of the homeless, the classism in education, the ignorance of the ones in power – the cause worth dedicating his life to, for which he would live and die with its purpose still thrumming through his veins. Enjolras was the future, and he would drive the steamroller of progress inch by inch without regret.

Grantaire would come out of university with a degree that would not guarantee him a job, and an apathy that would guarantee him unemployment. He considered following Enjolras, following his sun, lest he be left under the clouds for the rest of his lonely life. But that was a bad idea, since though it could fit as a comfort blanket in theory, would not work in practice. Grantaire was stuck in the present, seeing two-dimensionally a grey world that sat in staunch bleakness while Enjolras soared above him, seeking elevation of humanity – a beacon of hope in the gloom.

Grantaire could see his life stretching out before him, a dull flat road that petered out into nothingness. He imagined that he would fog it with alcohol if only to cease the monotony. He would watch his friends fledge into the world with causes and careers and lives, trying to cling to their ankles but eventually remaining alone.

Grantaire would see Les Amis gather to Enjolras like birds, and they would give him their vision, and their voices, and they would fly with him when he rose. Grantaire would stay stuck on the ground, in the rut of his miserable life, and he knew that however many birds flocked to Enjolras’ cause, there would always be those on the ground who liked to pretend they were above the common droves because they had the greater power, who would aim at his wings and his friends, and he would be shot down. The social injustices would continue. Grantaire saw all this in his mind, and he despaired.

Men like Enjolras were born to be flames; bright and hot and unstoppable. They were great, not always good, but they had purpose, and people who loved them.

Grantaire told this theory to Éponine, as he had done many times before, in a bar approximately half a mile from his flat. She smiled at him, as she always did, and he threw up at the end of the evening, as he always did, too.

Men like Enjolras had one of two purposes, to be a great leader, or a great lover.

Enjolras was too great a leader.

**Author's Note:**

> Enjolras' speech on the gearing of higher education towards richer students was written entirely by my good friend Zel, since when I wrote this originally I was not as much of a student politics hack as I apparently am now.


End file.
